Friday, January 23, 2015

"Mes Aynak (Pashto: مس عینک‎, meaning "little source of copper" from 'ayn = source) is a site 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Kabul, Afghanistan, located in a barren region of Logar Province. The site contains Afghanistan's largest copper deposit, as well as the remains of an ancient settlement with over 400 Buddha statues, stupas and a 100-acre (40 ha) monastery complex. It is also considered a major transit route for insurgents coming from Pakistan. Archaeologists are only beginning to find remnants of an older 5,000-year-old Bronze Age site beneath the Buddhist level including an ancient copper smelter.....The site of Mes Aynak possesses a vast compilation of Buddhist monasteries, homes, and market areas. The site contains artifacts recovered from the Bronze Age, and some of the artifacts recovered have dated back over three thousand years. The sites orientation on the Silk Road has yielded a mixture of elements from Iran, China and India. The wealth of Mes Aynak’s residents has been well represented in the sites far-reaching size and well guarded perimeter. The country of Afghanistan’s eagerness to unearth the massive amounts of copper below the site, is unfortunately leading to the site’s destruction rather than it’s preservation.....The Buddhist ruins were scheduled to be destroyed at the end of July 2012, but for several reasons, including political instability, this has been delayed, possibly until the end of 2014."

A Buddha statue discovered at the Mes Aynak archaeological site in the eastern province of Logar, in Afghanistan. .....http://www.ibtimes.com/china-afghanistans-minerals-archaeologists-still-scrambling-save-mes-aynak-1668808

"The earliest Buddhist remains date from the Kushan Gandhara era, although these gradually give way to T'ang Chinese and Uyghur influences. Mes Aynak was at the peak of its prosperity between the fifth and seventh century AD, a period of slow decline began in the eighth century and the settlement was finally abandoned 200 years later."

"Archaeologists believe that Mes Aynak is a major historical heritage site. It has been called "one of the most important points along the Silk Road" by French archaeologist, Philippe Marquis. There are thought to be 19 separate archaeological sites in the valley including two small forts, a citadel, four fortified monasteries, several Buddhist stupas and a Zoroastrian fire temple, as well as ancient copper workings, smelting workshops, a mint, and miners habitations. In addition to the Buddhist monasteries and other structures from the Buddhist era that have already been identified, Mes Aynak also holds the remains of prior civilizations likely going back as far as the 3rd century BC. Historians are particularly excited by the prospect of learning more about the early science of metallurgy and mining by exploring this site. It is known to contain coins, glass, and the tools for making these, going back thousands of years. Archaeologists have already unearthed manuscripts that may provide evidence regarding the presence of Alexander the Great's troops."

"Saving Mes Aynak has been selected for the prestigious FIPA Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels, screening this January 21, 2015 in Biarritz, France.....Director Brent Huffman, producer Zak Piper.....The film follows Afghan archaeologist Qadir Temori as he races against time to save a 5,000-year-old archaeological site in Afghanistan from imminent demolition by a Chinese state-owned mining company which is eager to harvest $100 billion dollars worth of copper buried directly beneath the archaeological ruins."....http://www.savingmesaynak.com/news/2015/1/7/lvbizut05g5bl517x23zb2vnc5s29t

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Dharma Fellowship of His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, Urgyen Trinley Dorje:......"In 672 an Arab governor of Sistan, Abbad ibn Ziyad, raided the frontier of Al-Hind and crossed the desert to Gandhara, but quickly retreated again. The marauder Obaidallah crossed the Sita River (aka Kabul River) and made a raid on Kabul in 698 only to meet with defeat and humiliation. Vincent Smith, in Early History of India, states that the Turkishahiya dynasty continued to rule over Kabul and Gandhara up until the advent of the Saffarids in the ninth century. Forced by the inevitable advance of Islam on the west, they then moved their capital from Kapisa to Wahund on the Indus, whence they contin­ued as the Hindushahiya dynasty. This was in 870 A.D. and marks the first time that the Kingdom of Shambhala actually came under Moslem domination. The Hindushahis recaptured Kabul and the rest of their Kingdom after the death of the conqueror Yaqub but never again maintained Kapisa as their capital.".....http://www.dharmafellowship.org/biographies/historicalsaints/lord-padmasambhava.htm#eightcentury

"Some leading Tibetan Lama scholars have accused Dzogchen of being a Chinese Dharma (rgya-nag gi chos), or assert that it is connected with Bon or Advaita Vedanta." ....http://vajranatha.com/teaching/DzogchenChinese.htm

The Golden Letters....Page 274.....By John Myrdhin Reynold

"Advaita Vedanta is a sub-school of the Vedanta school of Vedic philosophy and religious practice,.....The key source texts for all schools of Vedānta are the Prasthanatrayi......Advaita (not-two in Sanskrit) refers to the identity of the true Self, which is pure consciousness, and the highest Reality, which is also pure consciousness......Followers seek liberation/release by acquiring vidyā......Advaita thought can also be found in non-orthodox Indian religious traditions, such as the tantric Nath tradition....Advaita Vedanta developed in interaction with the other traditions of India ... Buddhism, Vaishnavism and Shaivism, as well as the other schools of Vedanta......In modern times, due to western Orientalism and Perennialism, and its influence on Indian Neo-Vedanta and Hindu nationalism, Advaita Vedanta has acquired a broad acceptance in Indian culture and beyond as the paradigmatic example of Hindu spirituality."

The Upanishads are sometimes referred to as Vedanta ("Last part of Veda")....More than 200 Upanishads are known, of which the first dozen or so are the oldest and most important and are referred to as the principal or main (mukhya) Upanishads. The mukhya Upanishads are found mostly in the concluding part of the Brahmanas and Aranyakas and have been passed down in oral tradition. They all predate the Common Era, possibly from the Pre-Buddhist period (6th century BCE) down to the Maurya period."....King, Richard; Ācārya, Gauḍapāda (1995), Early Advaita Vedānta and Buddhism: the Mahāyāna context of the Gauḍapādīya-kārikā, SUNY Press

"Sannyasa....The Renouncer Tradition.....The second half of the first millennium BCE was the period that created many of the ideological and institutional elements that characterize later Indian religions. The Renouncer Tradition played a central role during this formative period of Indian religious history....Some of the fundamental values and beliefs that we generally associate with Indian religions in general and Hinduism in particular were in part the creation of the Renouncer Tradition. These include the two pillars of Indian theologies: samsara - the belief that life in this world is one of suffering and subject to repeated deaths and births (rebirth); moksa/nirvana - the goal of human existence....."....Flood, Gavin; Olivelle, Patrick (2003), The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism... p. 273-274.

"Jalaluddin Rumi - great Persian poet (1207 - 1274 A.D.)....Call of advaita from Persia' within the Advaita Vedanta section:
The lamps are different but the Light is the same,
it comes from Beyond;
If thou keep looking at the lamp, thou art lost; for thence arises
the appearance of number and plurality;
Fix the gaze upon the Light and thou art divested from the
dualism, inherent in the finite body;
O Thou who art the kernel of existence, the disagreement
between Muslim, Zoroastrian and Jew depend upon the stand-point."
http://www.indiadivine.org/content/topic/1050904-jalaluddin-rumi-call-of-advaita-from-persia/

"Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism and Sufism in Islam. There are such significant similarities in their ontology..Sufism is akin to Advaita Vedanta. Their belief lies in the non dual Absolute and that the Truth (Haqiqa) lies at the heart of all things and yet is beyond all determination and limitation....one of the most famous Indian philosophers of all time is Sankaracarya or Sankara, who is believed to have lived in the 8th century AD....He established a monastic order, the Dasanamis."...https://tamaraalom.wordpress.com/self-in-sufism-advaita-vedanta-and-psychology/

"Dashanami Sampradaya ("Tradition of Ten Names") is a Hindu monastic tradition of "single-staff renunciation" (ēkadaṇḍisannyāsi) generally associated with the Advaita Vedanta tradition.....Single-staff renunciates are distinct in their practices from Shaiva trishuldhari or "trident-wielding renunciates" and Vaishnava traditions of Tridandi sannyāsis."......Journal of the Oriental Institute (pp 301), by Oriental Institute (Vadodara, India).

"For many Mâdhyamikas, Dzogchen is a sort of Chinese Dharma like Ch'an or coming from Advaita Vedânta, Kashmiri Shaivism, or even Persian religion. This discussion is ongoing. Parties do not seem willing to really listen to one another .... Although Dzogchenpas claim to agree with Mâdhyamaka regarding self-emptiness, identifying the primordial base of all phenomena with the self-empty "Dharmakâya", the teachings do affirm the natural state of the mind to be of the nature of clarity, to be "from the very beginning" inseparable from this base."....http://www.sofiatopia.org/bodhi/dzogchen.htm

"Tagzig, Zhang-Zhung, Western Tibet -......In Tibet there is a minority religion called Bon that long preceded the coming of Buddhism. Present-day Bon practice allies it with Buddhism. However, the original practice may have been quite different......According to Bon tradition, the founder of the orthodox Bon doctrine was Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche of Tagzig some 18,000 years ago. Tagzig is believed to be a form of Tajik and some writers identify the region with Balkh/Bactria. The name Shenrab has an Iranian sound to it......The Bon religion was spread by Shenrab's disciples and their student-translators to adjacent countries such as Zhang-Zhung (also Zhangzhung, Shang Shung or Xang Xung - a land north of the Himalayas, which contained Mount Kailash in today's Western Tibet), India (northern Indus valley cf. Bru-zha / Gilgit), Kashmir (Kha-che), Western China and eventually Greater Tibet......Tagzig is more completely called Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring and is described in Bon as a non-dual (one which resides beyond dualism) spiritual realm.... Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring is said to have been a fragrant land, coloured by beautiful flora and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. It was located west of Mount Kailash."....http://zoroastrianheritage.blogspot.com/2011/07/iranian-aryan-connections-with-western.html

"The Avesta and Rig Veda.....The Indo-Iranian group whose members composed the Zoroastrian scriptures, the Avesta, and the Hindu scriptures, the Rig Veda, called themselves Aryans (Airya/Airyan in the Avesta and Arya/Aryan in the Vedas). .....The Rig Veda is the older portion of the Vedas. The Avesta and Rig Veda are the only known ancient texts that contain references to Aryans. ....Similarity in Avestan & Rig Vedic Languages: The languages of the two scriptures, the Zoroastrian Avesta and Hindu Rig Veda, are similar but not identical, indicating that at the time of their composition, the people of the Avesta and the Rig Veda were related and close neighbours - in a fashion similar to two provinces within one country - provinces where the people spoke two dialects of the same language.....The history of the Aryans is found in the scriptures of the original Aryans, the Avesta, the Rig Veda, supporting religious texts, and the legends as well - legends such as the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi.".....http://heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/aryans/index.htm

"... the early history of Dzogchen (rdzogs chen: “the great perfection”) remains unclear and the subject of controversy.......The Indic origin of the early Dzogchen texts was disputed by Podrang Zhiwa Ö, a Western Tibetan monk and ruler of the 11th century, and a proponent of the “new transmissions”. From that time on, the question of Dzogchen’s authenticity has been raised, usually by critics of the Nyingma tradition, the home of this and many other transmissions from the early period.".....http://earlytibet.com/2008/01/08/early-dzogchen-i/

"Buton's History of Buddhism in India and Its Spread to Tibet: A Treasury of ...
By Butön Rinchen Drup; translated by Lisa Steinand, Ngawang Zangpo

"...The reading of the Tibetan inscription does not pose any problem. The name of Zhi ba ’od, and the title (Tib. lHa bla ma) associated with it, refers to a member of the royal family of the Guge-Purang Kingdom (Tib. Gu ge Pu hrang) in West Tibet. Although most of the biographical details of his life remain unknown, the main information regarding this charismatic figure of the later dissemination of Buddhism (Tib. bstan pa phyi dar) can be summed up as follows.....Born Yongs srong lde in the dragon year 1016, the third son of King lHa lde (r. 996 – 1023/4), and younger brother of Byang chub ’od (984 – 1078), he came to be known as Pho brang Zhi ba ’od when he received his full ordina- tion at the age of forty, in 1056. lHa bla ma Zhi ba ’od was a disciple of the notorious lo tsā ba Rin chen bzang po (958 – 1055) and eventually became the first translator of royal descent. He translated six major works, commis- sioned the translation of at least three other texts, and most certainly took part in the religious council held in Tholing (Tib. mTho lding) where he must have spent most of his life. As the religious centre of the kingdom, Tholing was the recipient of a variety of pious benefactions and constructions. Zhi ba ’od and his nephew King rTse lde, for instance, were responsible for the edification of the three-storey gSer khang which involved the commitment of more than two hundred master-artists and artisans. The temple was com- pleted within five years in 1071. Zhi ba ’od also bestowed the main temple of Tholing (Tib. dBu rtse) with clay statues representing the complete cycle of Sarvavid Vairocana (Tib. Kun rigs).29 Finally, lHa bla ma Zhi ba ’od is re- membered for his religious ordinance (Tib. bka’ shog) issued in 1092 in which he severely condemned apocryphal works, perverted tantras (Tib. sngags log), and called for the upholding of the bka’ gdams pa tradition.30 The demise of the royal monk and translator in the iron hare year 1111 marks the end of the later diffusion of Buddhism in West Tibet.....Page 204....Lha bla ma Zhi ba ‘od’s Bronze from Gilgit....http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/ret/pdf/ret_26_06.pdf

Unearthing Bon Treasures: Life and Contested Legacy of a Tibetan Scripture ...
By Dan Martin

The Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies: Tibetan Buddhist ...
By Bsod-Nams-Rgyal, Per K. Sørensen

Historical Dictionary of Tibet
By John Powers, David Templeman

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"Purang-Guge kingdom was a small Western Himalayan kingdom which was founded and flourished in the 10th century. It covered parts of remote western Tibet and northern Ladakh....The original capital was at Burang (Wylie: spu hreng) but was moved to Tholing in the Sutlej canyon southwest of Mount Kailash. It was divided into smaller kingdoms around the year 1100 CE..... Tholing, at 12,400 feet (3,800 m), the last town before Tsaparang in the kingdom of Guge was then its capital, (163 miles from Darchen). It was founded by the great-grandson of Langdarma, who was assassinated, leading to the collapse of the Tibetan Empire....Buddhist monuments at both Tsaparang and Tholing are now mostly in ruins except for a few statues and scores of murals in good condition, painted in the western Tibetan style.....While Langdarma persecuted Buddhism in Tibet, his grandson, King Yeshe-Ö, who ruled the Guge Kingdom in the 10th century with Tholing as its capital, was responsible for the second revival or "second diffusion" of Buddhism in Tibet; the reign of the Guge Kingdom was known more for the revival of Buddhism than for its conquests. He built Tholing Monastery in his capital city in the 997 AD along with two other temples built around the same time, Tabo Monastery in the Spiti Valley of Northeast India and Khochar Monastery (south of Purang); both these monasteries are functional.".....Swenson, Karen (19 March 2000). "Echoes of a Fallen Kingdom".

Chorten of King Yeshe Ö (Tholing (Zhada)......in Tholing (Zanda), Zanda County, near the Indian border of Ladakh. It was built in 997 AD by Yeshe-Ö, the second King of the Guge Kingdom....The temple is reported to have been reconstructed after it had been demolished by the Chinese.

"Yeshe-Ö (c. 959 - 1040) (birth name, Khor-re; spiritual names: Jangchub Yeshe-Ö, Byang Chub Ye shes' Od, Lha Bla Ma, Hla Lama Yeshe O, Lalama Yixiwo, bKra shis mgon; also Dharmaraja, meaning Noble King) was the first notable lama-king in Tibet. Yeshe-Ö was a monk-king in western Tibet. Born Khor-re, he is better known as Lhachen Yeshe-Ö, his spiritual name. He was the second king in the succession of the kingdom of Guge in the southwestern Tibetan Plateau. The extent of the kingdom was roughly equivalent to the area of the kingdom Zhangzhung that had existed until the 7th century. Yeshe-Ö abdicated the throne c. 975 to become a lama. In classical Tibetan historiography, the restoration of an organized and monastic tradition of Tibetan Buddhism is attributed to Yeshe-Ö. He built Tholing Monastery in 997 when Tholing (Chinese: Zanda) was the capital of Guge. Yeshe-Ö' sponsored noviciates, including the great translator Rinchen Zangpo."......Powers, John; Templeman, David (18 May 2012). Historical Dictionary of Tibet. Scarecrow Press.

"Revival of Tibetan Buddhism.......The second dissemination of Tibetan Buddhism was brought about by Yeshe O, who was the king in the western part of Tibet. The lineage of lay Vajrayana practitioners still survived after the dark age of Tibetan Buddhism, though the monastic and scholarly forms were severely destroyed. Many influential rulers in western Tibet desired to re-establish the entire Tibetan Buddhism. They sponsored translators to India as well. Thus, the second period of transmission of Buddhism in Tibet is often called " the period of the new translations ".......In 1042, the king invited the renowned scholar, Atisha Dipankara Shrijnana (AD 979-1053). He set out a graduated path to enlightenment, known as Lam-rim, stipulated in his book " The Lamp of the Path to Enlightenment ". He also reformed the monastic disciplines, particularly the mentor-student relationship of Lamas and disciples. Being the master of the second transmission of Buddhism in Tibet, his works had a great impact on Tibetan Buddhism, not just in the royal family but also the society. He turned the warrior-like Tibetans to the Buddhists seeking for peace. With his effort, Buddhism was firmly established in Tibet......This period marked the development of major schools in Tibetan Buddhism, and distinguished between the old and the new transmission periods. More sutras were translated, more monasteries were built and more Buddhists entered Tibet on pilgrimages."......http://www.thranguhk.org/buddhism/en_buddhism.html

"Some leading Tibetan Lama scholars have accused Dzogchen of being a Chinese Dharma (rgya-nag gi chos), or assert that it is connected with Bon or Advaita Vedanta." ....http://vajranatha.com/teaching/DzogchenChinese.htm

Saturday, January 17, 2015

"Metempsychosis.....the Greek concept of the transmigration of the soul. Metempsychosis (Greek: μετεμψύχωσις) is a philosophical term in the Greek language referring to transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death. Generally, the term is only used within the context of Ancient Greek philosophy, but has also been used by modern philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Kurt Gödel; otherwise, the term "transmigration" is more appropriate. The word plays a prominent role in James Joyce's Ulysses, and is also associated with Nietzsche.Another term sometimes used synonymously is palingenesia....The doctrine of Metempsychosis is one of the oldest of the human race."

"Julius Caesar recorded that the druids of Gaul, Britain and Ireland had metempsychosis as one of their core doctrines."

"The earliest Greek thinker with whom metempsychosis is connected is Pherecydes of Syros; but Pythagoras, who is said to have been his pupil, is its first famous philosophic exponent.....The real weight and importance of metempsychosis in Western tradition is due to its adoption by Plato[citation needed]. In the eschatological myth which closes the Republic he tells the myth how Er, the son of Armenius, miraculously returned to life on the twelfth day after death and recounted the secrets of the other world."

"The Orphic religion........Orpheus, its legendary founder, is said to have taught that soul and body are united by a compact unequally binding on either; the soul is divine, immortal and aspires to freedom, while the body holds it in fetters as a prisoner. Death dissolves this compact, but only to re-imprison the liberated soul after a short time: for the wheel of birth revolves inexorably. Thus the soul continues its journey, alternating between a separate unrestrained existence and fresh reincarnation, round the wide circle of necessity, as the companion of many bodies of men and animals."......Such was the teaching of Orphism which appeared in Greece about the 6th century BC, organized itself into private and public mysteries at Eleusis and elsewhere, and produced a copious literature....The Orphic religion, which taught reincarnation, first appeared in Thrace in north-eastern Greece and Bulgaria, about the 6th century BC,."

The Wheel of Life depicting the 6 realms of cyclic existence

"Saṃsāra (Sanskrit: संसार) (in Tibetan called khor ba "སམསར", pronounced /kɔrwɔ/, meaning "continuous flow" and in Sinhala called sangsāra "සංසාර" meaning "eternal cycle"), is the repeating cycle of birth, life and death (reincarnation) as well as one's actions and consequences in the past, present, and future in Hinduism, Buddhism, Bon, Jainism, Taoism and Sikhism.....During the course of each life the quality of the actions (karma) performed determine the future destiny of each person. The Buddha taught that there is no beginning to this cycle but that it can be ended through perceiving reality. The goal of these religions is to realize this truth, the achievement of which (like ripening of a fruit) is moksha or Nirvana (liberation)."

"The Buddhist concept of reincarnation differs from others in that there is no eternal "soul", "spirit" or "self" but only a "stream of consciousness" that links life with life. The actual process of change from one life to the next is called punarbhava (Sanskrit) or punabbhava (Pāli), literally "becoming again", or more briefly bhava, "becoming", and some English-speaking Buddhists prefer the term "rebirth" or "re-becoming" to render this term as they take "reincarnation" to imply a fixed entity that is reborn. Popular Jain cosmology and Buddhist cosmology as well as a number of schools of Hinduism posit rebirth in many worlds and in varied forms. In Buddhist tradition the process occurs across five or six realms of existence, including the human, any kind of animal and several types of supernatural being. It is said in Tibetan Buddhism that it is very rare for a person to be reborn in the immediate next life as a human."....

"In the Rigveda, the oldest extant Indo-Aryan text, numerous references are made to transmigration, rebirth (punarjanma), and redeath (punarmrtyu) in the Brahmanas.... One verse reads, "Each death repeats the death of the primordial man (purusa), which was also the first sacrifice" (RV 10:90). Another excerpt from the Rig Veda states (10: 16. 1-4): 'Burn him not up, nor quite consume him, Agni: let not his body or his skin be scattered. O Jatavedas, when thou hast matured him, then send him on his way unto the Fathers... let thy fierce flame, thy glowing splendour, burn him With thine auspicious forms, o Jatavedas, bear this man to the region of the pious... Again, O Agni, to the Fathers send him who, offered in thee, goes with our oblations. Wearing new life let him increase his offspring: let him rejoin a body, Jatavedas.'

The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian ...By Thomas McEvilley

"Gilgul, Gilgul neshamot or Gilgulei Ha Neshamot (Heb. גלגול הנשמות) refers to the concept of reincarnation in Kabbalistic Judaism, found in much Yiddish literature among Ashkenazi Jews. Gilgul means "cycle" and neshamot is "souls". The equivalent Arabic term is tanasukh: the belief is found among Shi'a ghulat Muslim sects."....

"The Yazidi religion is a syncretic combination of Zoroastrian, Manichaean, Jewish, Nestorian Christian and Islamic elements......Yazidi are anti-dualists; they deny the existence of evil and therefore also reject sin, the devil, and hell. The breaking of divine laws is expiated by way of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, which allows for progressive purification of the spirit. The Yazidi relate that when the devil repented of his sin of pride before God, he was pardoned and replaced in his previous position as chief of the angels; this myth has earned the Yazidl an undeserved reputation as devil worshippers. Shaykh Adi, the chief Yazidi saint, was a 12th century Muslim mystic believed to have achieved divinity through metempsychosis."

"Although the majority of sects within the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Kabbalah, the Cathars, the Druze and the Rosicrucians. The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism and Gnosticism of the Roman era, as well as the Indian religions, has been the subject of recent scholarly research."....The Shape of Ancient Thought by Thomas McEvilley

"Origen.....During the period from A.D. 250 to 553 controversy raged, at least intermittently, around the name of Origen (183-253 A.D.), and from this controversy emerged the major objections that orthodox Christianity raises against reincarnation. Origen of Alexandria, one of Christianity's greatest systematic theologians, was a believer in reincarnation..... the Emperor Justinian composed a tract against Origen in 543, proposing nine anathemas against "On First Principles", Origen's chief theological work. Origen was finally officially condemned in the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, when fifteen anathemas were charged against him...."

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

"Asma bint Marwan's Murder: The story of her murder as a result of the direct orders of Muhammad is not mentioned in the Ahadith but is very well documentd by Ibn Ishaq's P. 675.....After the murder of Abu Afak for criticising Muhammad, for the massacre of the Quraysh nobles at Badr, she too became incensed and blamed Muhammad and his followers in a poem- the usual newspapers of the Arabian tribes - condemning them.....For this , once more, Muhammad incited his followers to murder her, which act was committed by Umayr b. 'Adiy al Khatmi with Muhammad's full blessing."

"Jane Smith, in her detailed study "Women, Religion and Social Change in Early Islam" points at the high influence of poets at the time Muhammad in Arabia. She states that executions of poets such as Asma, Abu Afak, and those poets who were killed after Muhammad's final victory were the result of Muhammad's fears of "their continuing influence". "This constitutes interesting testimony of the power of their position, as well as of the recited words".

"ʻAṣmāʼ bint Marwān (Arabic: عصماء بنت مروان‎ "'Asmā' the daughter of Marwān") was a female member of the Ummayad clan who lived in Medina in 7th century Arabia....The story of her death by command of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, after she opposed him with poetry and provoked other pagans to commit violence against him, can be found in the sīra material collected by Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa'd."

"The story of bint Marwan and her death appears in the works of Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa'd. According to the reports, her family viewed Muhammad and his followers as unwelcome interlopers in Medina. After the Muslim victory over the Quraysh in Mecca in 624 in the Battle of Badr a number of Muhammad's opponents were killed after surrendering. She composed poems that publicly defamed the local tribesmen who converted to Islam and allied with Muhammad, and called for his death. In her poems, she also ridiculed Medinians for obeying a chief not of their kin. Ibn Ishaq mentions that bint Marwan also displayed disaffection after the Medinian Abu Afak was killed for inciting rebellion against Muhammad. The poem said: "do you expect good from (Muhammad) after the killing of your chiefs" and asked: "Is there no man of pride who would attack him by surprise/ And cut off the hopes of those who expect aught from him?" Upon hearing the poem, Muhammad then called for her death in turn, saying "Who will rid me of Marwan's daughter?" Umayr bin Adiy al-Khatmi, a blind man belonging to the same tribe as Asma’s husband (i.e., Banu Khatma) responded that he would. He crept into her room in the dark of night where she was sleeping with her five children, her infant child close to her bosom. Umayr removed the child from Asma's breast and killed her."

"Some classical and post-classical hadith scholars such as Al-Albani, Majdi, and Al-Jawzi have rejected the story, with some declaring it as fabrication, pointing out in their arguments that the chains of transmission by which the story was transmitted are all weak....Hadith (Arabic: حديث‎) in Muslim religious use is often translated as "prophetic traditions", meaning the corpus of the reports of the teachings, deeds and sayings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The hadith literature was compiled from oral reports that were in circulation in society around the time of their compilation long after the death of Muhammad....Clerics and jurists of all denominations classify individual hadith as sahih ("authentic"), hasan ("good") and da'if ("weak"). However, different traditions within each denomination, and different scholars within each tradition, may differ as to which hadith should be included in which category."

"The Hadith also had a profound and controversial influence on moulding the commentaries (tafsir) on the Quran. The earliest commentary of the Quran by Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari is mostly sourced from the hadith. The hadith was used in forming the basis of 'Shariah' Law. Much of early Islamic history available today is also based on the hadith and is challenged for lack of basis in primary source material and contradictions based on secondary material available.

"Traditions of the life of Muhammad and the early history of Islam were passed down mostly orally for more than a hundred years after Muhammad's death in AD 632. Muslim historians say that Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (the third khalifa (caliph) of the Rashidun Empire, or third successor of Muhammad, who had formerly been Muhammad's secretary), is generally believed to urge Muslims to record the hadith just as Muhammad suggested to some of his followers to write down his words and actions.....Uthman's labours were cut short by his assassination, at the hands of aggrieved soldiers, in 656. No sources survive directly from this period so we are dependent on what later writers tell us about this period......By the 9th century the number of hadiths had grown exponentially. Islamic scholars of the Abbasid period were faced with a huge corpus of miscellaneous traditions, some of them flatly contradicting each other. Many of these traditions supported differing views on a variety of controversial matters. Scholars had to decide which hadith were to be trusted as authentic and which had been invented for political or theological purposes. To do this, they used a number of techniques which Muslims now call the science of hadith."

"Sunni and Shia hadith collections differ because scholars from the two traditions differ as to the reliability of the narrators and transmitters. Narrators who took the side of Abu Bakr and Umar rather than Ali, in the disputes over leadership that followed the death of Muhammad, are seen as unreliable by the Shia; narrations sourced to Ali and the family of Muhammad, and to their supporters, are preferred. Sunni scholars put trust in narrators, such as Aisha, whom Shia reject. Differences in hadith collections have contributed to differences in worship practices and shari'a law and have hardened the dividing line between the two traditions."

" Jihad ("struggle" in Arabic).....Jihadism is used to refer to contemporary armed jihad in Islamic fundamentalism. The term "jihadism" is coined in the 2000s and mostly used to cover Islamic insurgency and terrorism since that time, but it has also been extended to cover both Mujahideen guerilla warfare and Islamic terrorism with an international scope since it arose in the 1980s, since the 1990s substantially represented by the al-Qaeda network..... Contemporary jihadism ultimately has its roots in the late 19th and early 20th century ideological developments of Islamic revivalism, developed into Qutbism and related ideologies during the mid 20th century. Its rise was re-enforced by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979....Jihadism with an international, Pan-Islamist scope in this sense is also known as Global Jihadism. Generally the term jihadism denotes Sunni Islamist armed struggle. Sectarian tensions led to numerous forms of (Salafist and other Islamist) jihadism in opposition of Shia Islam, Sufi Islam and Ahmadi Islam."

"Jihad Cool is a term used by Western security experts concerning the re-branding of militant Jihadism into something fashionable, or "cool", to younger people through social media, magazines,rap videos, clothing, toys, propaganda videos, and other means. It is a sub-culture mainly applied to individuals in developed nations who are recruited to travel to conflict zones on Jihad. For example Jihadi rap videos make participants look "more MTV than Mosque".

"A Muslim, sometimes spelled Moslem, relates to a person who follows the religion of Islam, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the Quran."

"Islam (Arabic: الإسلام‎, al-ʾIslām) is a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion articulated by the Qur'an, an Islamic holy book considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of God (Allāh), and for the vast majority of adherents, also by the teachings and normative example (called the Sunnah and composed of hadith) of Muhammad (c. 570–8 June 632 CE), considered by them to be the last prophet of God. An adherent of Islam is called a Muslim."

"The Prophet Muhammad received his first revelation in 610 AD.... from Allah through Angel Jibreel (Gabriel) in the cave called Hira, located on the mountain called Jabal an-Nour, near Mecca."

"The first command that came to Muhammad at the first revelation was to "Read", the question is: Would Muhammad be asked to read if he cannot read?.....The Hadith followers conveniently fabricated a hadith to counter act this argument. According to this hadith, Muhammad replied to Gabriel "I cannot read"! So Gabriel commanded him once more to "Read", and once again Muhammad gave the same reply, then the rest of the sura was given to him......This hadith makes Gabriel look like an idiot asking someone who cannot read to read then insisting on his request when Muhammad keeps insisting he cannot read, and since at the end of this curious exchange the matter was still unresolved and Muhammad was still unable to read (according to the hadith followers) then how did he receive the rest of the revelation?.....The hadith followers say that he did not need to be able to read to receive the revelation! But if that is so, then why did Gabriel ask him to read in the first place?.....Whichever way we look at it, the concept of this hadith is ridiculous to say the least. But that is not all, the Arabic words, which Muhammad is supposed to have said to Gabriel (according to the hadith), are "Ma ana bi qari" which could mean "I cannot read", but can also mean "I am not going to read"... When Muhammad died, he left the complete Quran written down with his own hand in the chronological order of revelation, along with specific instructions as to where to place every verse. "

"Muslims believe the Quran was verbally revealed by God to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel (Jibril), gradually over a period of approximately 23 years, beginning on 22 December 609 CE,when Muhammad was 40, and concluding in 632 CE, the year of his death...According to the traditional narrative, several companions of Muhammad served as scribes and were responsible for writing down the revelations."

Saturday, January 10, 2015

"The Perennial philosophy (Latin: philosophia perennis), also referred to as Perennialism, is a perspective in the philosophy of religion which views each of the world’s religious traditions as sharing a single, universal truth on which foundation all religious knowledge and doctrine has grown."

"In his version of Shambhala, Chogyam Trungpa chose the story that links its origins with the Buddha and a King named Dawo Sangpo, though at times he too referred to the Shambhala legend as older and more extensive than Buddhism. In this story, the king wanted the teachings, but he wanted to retain his kingly prerogatives - ministers, musicians, dancers, feasts, the arts, and so forth. The Buddha, according to this version, dismissed his monks and gave special teachings to King Dawo Sangpo based on enlightened "rulership." Whatever their origins, the teachings have remained a part of Tibetan legendary history, and Chogyam Trungpa was inspired to renew them in a form that could be used in the twentieth century......Consistent with the legends, the most important part of the Way of Shambhala, as Chogyam Trungpa presented it, is the vision of a society that could be created in this age with sane, intelligent, and gentle people. This vision is to be realized through the disciplined application of meditation practice to our daily life. Shambhala Training, which is the method of this way, is based on traditional Buddhist meditation practice. However, instead of exploring the origins of mind and the development of ego, as Buddhism does, Shambhala begins with our actual sensual existence in the ordinary phenomenal world. It sees this existence as permeated with good energy beyond the individual self and, at the same time, blocked and distorted by our neurotic relationships to ourselves and the world......Chogyam Trungpa sketched in the outlines of what a Shambhala culture means. “Shambhala is our way of life. The Shambhala principle is our way of life. Shambhala is the Central Asian kingdom that-developed in the countries of the Middle East, Russia, China, and Tibet altogether. The basic idea of Shambhala vision is that a sane society developed out of that culture, and we are trying to emulate that vision. That particular system broke down into the Taoist tradition and Bon tradition of Tibet, the Islamic tradition of the Middle East, and whatever tradition Russia might have. It has broken into various factions.......“What we are trying to present here is that there is a comprehensive philosophy and wisdom which is not necessarily that of the West or the East. We are trying to present the possibility that we can actually bring together out of those different factions the warrior tradition of basic goodness.”.......Shambhala the Path of the Warrior by William A. Gordon.......http://www.quietspaces.com/Shambhala/kingdom.html

"In the early 19th century this idea was popularised by the Transcendentalists. Towards the end of the 19th century the Theosophical Society further popularized the concept under the name of "Wisdom-Religion" or "Ancient Wisdom". In the 20th century it was popularized in the English-speaking world through Aldous Huxley's book The Perennial Philosophy as well as by the strands of thought which culminated in the New Age movement."

"Secularity (adjective form secular, from Latin saecularis meaning "worldly" or "temporal") is the state of being separate from religion, or not being exclusively allied with or against any particular religion.....From the 1970s to 1990s, Shambhala Training explained itself as “a secular path of meditation.” It was: explicitly non-Buddhist....not a religion; without dogmatic beliefs; compatible with atheism and secular humanism......compatible with any religion, including Christianity......Secular mindfulness meditation is commonplace now, but this was radical then. Shambhala was an opportunity to learn advanced Buddhist meditation techniques without having to buy into Buddhist beliefs and institutions. For me, and tens of thousands of others, that was hugely valuable.......Officially, Shambhala Training synthesized several spiritual traditions from around the world. In reality, its founder, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, drew mainly on the specific, unusual Vajrayana system he learned in Tibet....Shambhala could be understood entirely naturalistically.".... David Chapman.....https:/meaningness.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/shambhala-training-was-secular-vajrayana/

"Kalachakra and the VAJRA CASTE...."The purpose of the Vajra Caste was not force everyone to convert to Buddhism but for people to re-discover the purity of their own traditions. The Kalachakra empowerment is given to anyone who wishes to participate. No one is asked to give up their own religion. The Kalachakra, open to all who wish to participate, has the power to benefit all beings on this planet."...https://collab.itc.virginia.edu/access/content/group/9f340e95-f808-4bc0-80bc-b23bcadd072e/copyrighted%20pdfs%20of%20texts/newmanbriefhistorykalachakra.pdf

"Shahāb ad-Dīn" Yahya ibn Habash as-Suhrawardī (Persian: شهاب‌الدین سهروردی‎, also known as Sohrevardi) was a Persian philosopher, a Sufi and founder of Illuminationism, an important school in Islamic mysticism that drew upon Zoroastrian and Platonic ideas. The "light" in his "Philosophy of Illumination" is a divine and metaphysical source of knowledge. He is sometimes given the honorific title Shaikh al-ʿIshraq "Master of Illumination" and sometimes is called Shaikh al-Maqtul "the Murdered Master", referring to his execution for heresy. Mulla Sadra, the Persian sage of the Safavid era has termed Suhrawardi as "the Reviver of the Traces of the Pahlavi (Iranian) Sages", and Suhrawardi, in his magnum opus "The Philosophy of Illumination", thought of himself as a reviver or resuscitator of the ancient tradition of Persian wisdom.".....Ziai, H.(1997), “Al-Suhrawardi”, Encyclopaedia of Islam,

"Ernst Christian Ludwig von Bunsen or Ernest de Bunsen (Rome, 1819-London, 1903) was an Anglo-German writer whose speculative works proposing common origins of Buddhism, Essene Judaism and Christianity were later taken up as part of racist Aryan mythology.....The Angel-Messiah of Buddhists, Essenes and Christians (London, 1880).....

"Perennialism is a perspective within the philosophy of religion which views each of the world’s religious traditions as sharing a single, universal truth on which foundation all religious knowledge and doctrine has grown. According to this view, each world religion, including but not limited to Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto, Sikhism, and Buddhism, is an interpretation of this universal truth adapted to cater for the psychological, intellectual, and social needs of a given culture of a given period of history. The universal truth which lives at heart of each religion has been rediscovered in each epoch by saints, sages, prophets, and philosophers. These include not only the 'founders' of the world's great religions but also gifted and inspired mystics, theologians, and preachers who have revived already existing religions when they had fallen into empty platitudes and hollow ceremonialism......Perennialists argue that although the sacred scriptures of the world religions are undeniably diverse and often superficially oppose each other, one can discern a common doctrine regarding the ultimate purpose of human life. Typically this doctrine is posited as mystical insofar as it views the summum bonum of human life as an experiential union with the supreme being (sometimes perceived as an "energy" such as the universe) which can only be achieved by undertaking a programme of physical and mental 'purification' or 'improvement'.".....Charles Schmitt, Perennial Philosophy: From Agostino Steuco to Leibniz, Journal of the History of Ideas. P. 507, Vol. 27, No. 1, (Oct. – Dec. 1966)

"Perennialism may be contrasted with conventional religious orthodoxy or fundamentalism, which demarcates clear lines of truth and falsehood separating religions.....Orthodoxy (from Greek ὀρθός, orthos ("right", "true", "straight") and δόξα, doxa ("opinion" or "belief", related to dokein, "to think"),) is adherence to accepted norms, more specifically to creeds, especially in religion. In the Christian sense the term means "conforming to the Christian faith as represented in the creeds of the early Church"."

"Many perennialist thinkers (including Armstrong, Huston Smith and Joseph Campbell) are influenced by Hindu reformer Ram Mohan Roy and Hindu mystics Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda.,who themselves have taken over western notions of universalism. They regarded Hinduism to be a token of this Perennial Philosophy." .....King, Richard (2002), Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and "The Mystic East", Routledge

"Islam......From the beginning, Islam has considered itself to be the final flourishing of perennial wisdom before the “end of times”. The Qur'an is replete with references to earlier religious figures from the Jewish and Christian traditions, considering that Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mary and other holy figures were always muslim (i.e. they submitted to god, and believed in one god only). The idea of a single religious truth is more apparent among the Sufi or mystical traditions of Islam, with parallelisms in the Judaeo-Christian and Hindu tradition, than it is among orthodox scholars, who recognise the Jewish and Christian truths, but by necessity reject all beliefs that seem contrary to Islam (such as the Trinity, the sonship of Christ, or the reality of the crucifixion). Some very vocal versions of Islam on the other hand (e.g. Salafism), reject in their entirety all other religious traditions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism.".... Classification of Knowledge in Islam by Dr. Osman Bakar, 1998

Sunday, January 4, 2015

".....a king named Samudra Vijaya arrived at S'ambhala in 618 A.D., and shortly
after that the period called, in the Tibetan chronology......Me-kha-rgya-Mtsho,
commenced. It is also stated that in 622 A.D., at Makha (Mecca) the Muhamadan religion
was established. From what can be gathered from Tibetan histories and works on Kala
Chakra it may be conjectured that this S'ambhala, very probably, was the capital of the Bactrian
Empire of the Eastern Greeks who had embraced Buddhism. It is also conjectured that
the modern city of Balkh must have been the site of their latest capital. The name of King
Menander {in Sanskrit: Minendra) who erected a very lofty chaitya (castle) has been mentioned by
the Kashmirian poet Ksomendra, in the Avaddna Kalpalata, a work that was finished in about
1035 A.D. ..."...http://archive.org/stream/grammaroftibetan00dass/grammaroftibetan00dass_djvu.txt

"Referring to Samudra Vijaya, Alexander Csoma (1784-1842) in a footnote remarked: "This pretended King's arrival at S'ambhala in 622 AD coincides with Yazdegerd III , (624-651 AD).....the Persian King's taking refuge in the same country upon the fall of Seleucia and the conquest of Persia by the Arabs in 636 AD, retired to Trans-Oxiaea or Ferghana."

An introduction to the grammar of the Tibetan language, with the texts of Situhi sumrtags, Dag-je sal-wei mé-long and Situhi shal-lü[ng] (1915)......https://archive.org/stream/grammaroftibetan00dass/grammaroftibetan00dass_djvu.txt

"Samudra is a Sanskrit term for "ocean", literally the "gathering together of waters" (saṃ- meaning "together" and -udra meaning "water". Dictionary meaning of samudra is ‘confluence’ and ‘ocean/sea’.

"Vijaya, a name for the Hindu goddess Shantadurga

"Sarat Chandra Das (Bengali: শরৎচন্দ্র দাস) (1849–1917) was an Indian scholar of Tibetan language and culture most noted for his two journeys to Tibet in 1879 and in 1881–1882......In 1878, a Tibetan teacher, Lama Ugyen Gyatso arranged a passport for Sarat Chandra to go the monastery at Tashilhunpo. In June 1879, Das and Ugyen-gyatso left Darjeeling for the first of two journeys to Tibet. They remained in Tibet for six months, returning to Darjeeling with a large collection of Tibetan and Sanskrit texts which would become the basis for his later scholarship. Sarat Chandra spent 1880 in Darjeeling poring over the information he had obtained. In November 1881, Sarat Chandra and Ugyen-gyatso returned to Tibet, where they explored the Yarlung Valley, returning to India in January 1883."..... Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet, Das, Sarat Chadra, pp xi–xiii, Paljor Publications, New Delhi, 2001

"Thonmi Sambhota (Thönmi Sambhoṭa, aka Tonmi Sambhodha;, Tib. ཐོན་མི་སམྦྷོ་ཊ་, Wyl. thon mi sam+b+ho Ta; b. seventh cent.) is traditionally regarded as the inventor of the Tibetan script and author of the Sum cu pa and Rtags kyi 'jug pa in the 7th century AD...According to Tibetan tradition, Songsten Gampo sent a young man of the Thönmi or Thumi clan, Sambhoṭa son of Anu (or Drithorek Anu), to India (in 632?) with other youths, to learn the alphabet. The pattern chosen was the script of Kashmir. "

"Situ Paṇchen Chökyi Jungné (Tib. སི་ཏུ་པཎ་ཆེན་ཆོས་ཀྱི་འབྱུང་གནས་, Wyl. si tu paN chen chos kyi 'byung gnas) (1700-1774) — the Eighth Tai Situ. One of the most influential masters in Tibetan history....From 1731-33, he worked on editing and correcting the woodblocks to be used for printing the Derge edition of the Kangyur.....After this was finished, he concentrated his efforts on revising translations of important Sanskrit works, especially of treatises on grammar and poetry."

An Introduction to the Grammar of the Tibetan Language, with the Texts of Situhi Sumrtags, Dag-Je Sal-Wei Me-Long and Situhi Shal-Lu[ng... Paperback – December 15, 2013
by Das Sarat Chandra 1849-1917

"......870 A.D. marks the first time that the Kingdom of Shambhala actually came under Moslem domination…".....Dharma Fellowship of His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa

"Legend reports that Vasubandhu came from the "Kingdom of Shambhala' (approximately, modern Begram, otherwise known as the ancient kingdom of Kapisha, north of Kabul) located in the Afghanistan region, north-west of Peshawar....Bagram (بگرام Bagrám), founded as Alexandria on the Caucasus and known in medieval times as Kapisa, is a small town and seat in Bagram District in Parwan Province of Afghanistan, about 60 kilometers north of the capital Kabul….in the old tradition of the 84 Mahasiddhas that the Kingdom of Uddiyana was divided between two countries, to the North and South. To the North, it bordered on the land of Shambhala (i.e., the Kingdom of Kapisa)……"...Website of His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, Urgyen Trinley Dorje………..….http://www.dharmafellowship.org/biographies/historicalsaints/pramodavajra.htm"….

Saturday, January 3, 2015

"Then, as the legend is told, one day in the 10th century while walking along a path in northern India, the master Jamyang Dorje had a vision of his meditation deity Manjushri who instructed him to follow the path northwards. Along his way, Jamyang Dorje encountered an emanation of the 11th Kalkin of Shambhala who performed the entire Kalachakra empowerment and transferred this tantric lineage of realization onto him. After meditating for 6 months on the profound yogic practices that he received from the Kalkin, Jamyang Dorje was able to transport himself to Shambhala. While there in Shambhala, he studied the Kalachakra Tantra further with the Kalkin before returning to India. Upon his return, Jamyang Dorje became known as "Kalachakrapada the Elder."....http://www.jonangfoundation.org/brief-history

Click on the map to enlarge

"The Kalachakra Tantra and its commentary were then passed on from Kalachakrapada the Elder to his younger successor Shribhadra or "Kalachakrapada the Younger." The lineage of these tantric teachings continued onto Nalendrapa (otherwise known as Bodhibhadra) and then to the Kashmiri master Somanatha. This succession of esoteric transmission passed from Somanatha to his disciple, the Tibetan translator Dro Lotsawa Sherab Drak. Dro Lotsawa together with Somanatha translated the root tantra along with the Stainless Light commentary from Sanskrit into Tibetan, initiating the Dro lineage of the Kalachakra Tantra in Tibet."....http://www.jonangfoundation.org/brief-history

"One of the Kashmiri scholar Somanatha's disciples, the 11th century Kalachakra yogi Yumo Mikyo Dorje (b. 1027) is regarded as one of the earliest Tibetan articulators of a zhentong ("shentong," gzhan stong) view -- an understanding of the absolute radiant nature of reality. Emphasized within the Kalachakra Tantra and the Buddha's 3rd turning teachings on Buddhanature."....http://www.jonangfoundation.org/brief-history

"The Ra and Dro traditions say that the Kalachakra was introduced into India by Cilu and Kalachakrapada. The Kalachakra continued to be studied and practised in India, and it was eventually introduced into Tibet. Again, the Ra and Dro traditions are the two main lineages through which this occurred......The Dro tradition started from the visit of the Kashmiri Pandit Somanatha to Tibet. Somanatha first arrived in Tibet at Kharag and stayed among the Ryo clan. For a fee of one hundred measures of gold Somanatha translated half of the great Kalachakra commentary, the Vimalaprabha, into Tibetan, but in the meantime he became displeased and stopped his work. He took the gold and his draft translation and went to Phan Yul drub. There Chung Wa of the Zhang clan took Somanatha as his guru, and Shayrabdrak of the Dro clan acted as translator. Somanatha and Shayrabdrak translated the entire Vimalaprabha."......Kalachakra Initiations by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.....Introduction to the Kalachakra.......http://www.dalailama.com/teachings/kalachakra-initiations

"Yumo Mikyöt Dorjé (Tibetan: ཡུ་མོ་མི་བསྐྱོད་རྡོ་རྗེ་, Wylie: yu mo mi bskyod rdo rje) was a student of the Kashmiri scholar Somanātha and an 11th-century Kalachakra master. Yumo Mikyöt Dorjé is regarded as one of the earliest Tibetan articulators of a shentong view of śūnyatā — an understanding of the absolute radiant nature of reality. Emphasized within the Kalachakra tantra and Gautama Buddha's teachings on Buddha-nature in the so-called Third Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma of the Yogacara school of Buddhism philosophy; this view later became emblematic of the Jonang tradition of Tibetan Buddhism."...http://www.jonangfoundation.org/early-jonangpa-tibet

As Long as Space Endures: Essays on the Kalacakra Tantra (Page 222) ...edited by Edward A. Arnold